Chapter 16
Spence stumbled mid-step while peeling off his pants, his balance tipping sideways like a tree cut at the ground. One knee hit the floor hard, the impact jarring up through bone. He caught himself before he fell further, his breath sharp.
Zander usually waited until the scene started before withdrawing his power, but his Master seemed more focused than normal.
He’d been told early the day before that there would be a lengthy scene today, and to clear both his and Zander’s schedules from five in the evening until one in the morning.
Zander had an appointment at two-thirty, an hour and a half later, but Spence’s calendar was clear until noon Sunday, when he’d wake and cook for the flock.
Earlier in the day, Emmy had told him to get the wooden pony from the storage area and bring it in.
Fitting, that he’d been required to bring a list of implements from the dungeon, to set up the scene of his own undoing.
And he had no doubt about that, based on the things he’d so neatly arranged on the small worktable he’d brought in.
It’d been too long since they’d given him the kind of scene that stripped him down to nothing.
His body hummed with anticipation, but his hands had trembled slightly when he’d laid out the tawse.
The cruelest cane sat beside it, the one that left marks for days, and the loopy johnny he’d made himself from network cables and delivered the kind of pain that sang through nerves like electricity.
And the wooden pony. God, the wooden pony.
Fear knotted in his stomach alongside the hunger.
He needed this, craved it with an intensity that made his skin feel too tight, but need didn’t make it less terrifying.
The wooden pony wasn’t just pain, it was endurance, suffering that built and built with no release, no rhythm to ride.
Just relentless pressure on the most sensitive parts of him until his body screamed and his mind finally, finally let go.
He wanted it and he was terrified of it. Both things were true, and both things made him harder than he’d been in weeks.
And so he breathed through the initial pain of losing Zander’s power, stripped of the magical current that let him leap floors, heal injuries without having to change , and push past pain when necessary.
He could lift seven hundred pounds with his werewolf strength, but over two thousand pounds with Zander’s power coursing through him. And now that power was gone.
He’d asked for this, though. Begged for it. The helplessness, the inability to override the pain.
He hadn’t expected to lose the ability to telepath, but he was happy for that as well. It made him even more their vessel, the plaything they fucked and hurt, the endeavor they worked on together.
But it was always a shock, losing the electric, magical river of strength that flowed through him, the pulse of every oath-bound vampire and shifter in the coterie, the extra layer of speed and endurance that had become as natural as breathing.
A natural part of him, until it was gone.
Zander watched from five feet away, expression unreadable, but Spence still felt the steady warmth of love. No pity, no triumph. Just quiet certainty.
“You were told to strip and mount the horse,” Zander said softly.
Spence immediately pushed himself back up, and once standing, removed his pants and placed them beside his already folded shirt.
He was rarely allowed underwear, and had stepped out of his socks before taking his shirt off — his original slave training had stressed that slaves are never clad in socks alone unless a freeperson specifically requires it. Socks come off first.
Naked, he walked to the center of the room where the wooden pony waited. Beautifully carved, with the top edge sanded just enough to bruise rather than cut. Plenty sharp enough to cause a helluva lot of damage, though.
Spence straddled the horse, and Zander cuffed his wrists to the overhead bar Spence had hung from the ceiling mount an hour before.
And then the pony was raised. It touched his balls, then pressed against them.
Spence went to tiptoe, but Zander kept raising it until Spence’s weight was entirely on it.
He grabbed the bar over his head and lifted his body, figuring he’d soon lose that ability, but he hadn’t been told not to, so he did.
And then Emmy lifted his left, already-cuffed ankle and connected it to an eyebolt on the side of the horse, mere inches below his ass.
Zander did the same with his right leg, and Spence realized he could push up with his ankles a little.
Using both his arms and legs, he could keep the worst of the pain at bay, but he realized with a sick jolt that he’d been wrong about the eight hours.
It wasn’t going to be dinner and a movie, followed by a scene.
It was going to be an eight-hour scene, and his arms and legs would tire long before it ended, fatigue would set in, and his tender flesh would bear his weight on the cruel horse.
Emmy stepped close, her warmth a living contrast to Zander’s cool distance.
She kissed him slow, deep, her tongue claiming his mouth while her fingers stroked down his chest, teasing nipples already peaked from nerves and anticipation.
When she pulled back, her eyes dark with hunger and love, her fingers wrapped around his cock and then moved slowly. Up and down. Up and down.
“You suffer because we want you to. Because it’s who we are, the three of us.”
Spence swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Zander moved behind him, hands sliding over shoulders, down ribs, possessive and grounding. No words. Just touch. Then the first strike, a flogger on his back.
Then Emmy was in front of him with a flogger, and aimed for his chest, the leather biting into nipples.
Spence’s arms strained to hold him off the horse, and his lovers warmed his front and back with leather until his skin sang with heat and sensation. Emmy stopped to put clamps on his nipples, and then whipped them some more.
Spence pushed up with his legs, his thighs already burning, and then gasped when Emmy flogged his thighs, lighting the skin up so it smoldered with the same fire as the muscles.
Spence’s breath punched out in a broken moan, shoulders straining, hands already cramping a little.
Emmy changed the nipple clamps out. The new ones had steel teeth that bit deep into sensitive flesh, and then she added weights until the pull was constant, excruciating.
The fresh bite sank in like fire, sharper than before, and Spence’s breath hissed out between clenched teeth as the weights settled their relentless tug. Every tiny shift of his body on the pony sent fresh agony spiking hot, and radiating outward.
He gripped the bar overhead harder, knuckles white, using the wood beneath him to anchor himself against the urge to thrash.
The pain was alive, pulsing in time with his heartbeat, and yet beneath it all, his cock twitched harder, leaking steadily, as if the torment itself was stroking him from the inside out.
Emmy grabbed a small plastic flogger and whipped his cock relentlessly, heating it until it was on fire, until the shaft and head were an angry red.
Each strike landed with a wet, stinging crack that made his hips jerk involuntarily against the unforgiving ridge of the pony.
The thin plastic strands bit like nettles, raising instant welts that burned hotter with every lash.
His cock throbbed in protest, swollen and hypersensitive, every nerve screaming as the flogger danced over already-abused skin.
The pain built in vicious layers, sharp and stinging, then blooming into a deep, throbbing ache that sank into his balls and coiled low in his gut.
He couldn’t stop the broken sounds spilling from his throat: half-growl, half-whimper, raw and helpless.
The ridge beneath him ground cruelly against his balls and perineum with every involuntary buck, pressing just enough pressure on his prostate to keep him teetering on the razor’s edge of release without letting him fall.
Then came her lubed hand wrapped around his oversensitive cock, and she edged him mercilessly while Zander used a particularly harsh flogger on his back, each individual strand cutting and stinging.
Emmy’s slick fingers stroked with slow, deliberate precision — tight at the base, twisting over the head, thumb circling the slit until his thighs shook and his toes curled against the cuffs.
Every upstroke dragged fresh fire along the welted length; every downstroke squeezed just enough to make his balls draw up tight, aching for the orgasm he knew would be denied.
His entire body felt like a bundle of exposed nerves, and they were just getting started.
Behind him, Zander’s flogger landed in heavy, overlapping patterns.
Each leather strand kissed his back with vicious precision, slicing thin lines of fire across shoulders, ribs, spine.
The sting layered over itself until his skin felt flayed open, every lash pulling a guttural cry from deep in his chest. The pain radiated outward in hot waves, meeting the throbbing agony in his nipples, the burning throb of his cock, the grinding pressure of the pony beneath him.
It all fused together into an overwhelming, unbearable, perfect combination of pleasure and pain he’d soon lose the ability to separate, just sensation so intense he couldn’t name it anymore.
But right now, he could absolutely feel the pain as just that, and a long, low wail escaped from his chest.
He held the bar like a lifeline, muscles trembling, sweat running into his eyes, every breath ragged and shallow. He was theirs, completely, irrevocably theirs, and the reminder made the torment sweeter, the need sharper, the surrender deeper.
Emmy’s hand worked him slow, then fast, then slow again, bringing him to the brink over and over, only to slow again, leaving him throbbing, leaking, desperate .
And then she was gone, and so was the flogger at his back. His Masters kissed and then moved to the bed, which he was facing, so he could watch them make love and enjoy each other while he balanced on the cruel pony and lived with the pain.
The pony’s ridge pressed mercilessly into the tender flesh between his balls and his ass, a constant, grinding pressure that had long since passed from sharp ache into a dull, bone-deep burn.
Every tiny shift of his weight to relieve one spot only transferred the torment to another; the wooden edge bit deeper, forcing him to hold himself perfectly still or risk fresh agony that would ripple up his spine and make his clamped nipples scream anew.
He rocked to hurt his ass rather than his balls.
Then moved back. He gripped the bar overhead until his forearms trembled, sweat sliding down his ribs, pooling at the small of his back.
The pain was woven into every breath, every heartbeat, every futile twitch of his cock that had nowhere to go.
Yet he watched them without resentment, only a fierce, quiet joy that they could lose themselves in each other while he held space for their pleasure.
Emmy’s triumph when she rolled Zander beneath her and rode him like a cowgirl, and then her low and breathless laugh when Zander rolled them so he was on top and pounding her; the way her fingers dug into his shoulders, the arch of her back when he sank deep.
It was beautiful. Necessary. Theirs. And Spence felt no jealousy, only gratitude that he was allowed to witness it, even if witnessing meant burning.
Sometimes their coitus was more battle than lovemaking, one taking the top, then the other, back and forth in a fluid, wordless contest of strength and surrender.
Other times Emmy rode him unchallenged, hips rolling in that slow, deliberate rhythm that made her eyes flutter shut and her breath hitch; or Zander fucked her ass with her folded comfortably knees-and-chest, her moans rising in sharp, helpless waves as orgasm after orgasm tore through her.
Each sound, each shudder, each slick slide of skin on skin edged Spence all over again, and his cock jerked untouched, balls drawn so tight they ached with every heartbeat, the denied release coiling tighter until it felt like something alive and furious trapped beneath his skin.
The order to hang the old analog clock this morning should’ve clued him into how the evening would go, because now he was forced to watch the black second hand sweeping its relentless circle, the minute hand crawling like cold molasses across the face.
Time stretched and thinned on the pony, each sixty seconds an eternity of fire in his thighs, his groin, his chest. He counted the sweeps without meaning to, each one carving another layer into the haze of pain and want.
The clock didn’t lie. Minutes became hours in his body, even as the hands proved otherwise.
He was suspended in their pleasure and his pain, a living hourglass filled with fire instead of sand, and all he could do was hold on, breathe through it, and love them both with every ragged inhale.
And with the knowledge that, before this was over, he would watch the hour hand circle eight times.
Eight endless turns of the minute hand dragging the second hand around and around while his body burned and begged and held on because there was no escape.
Eight hours of the pony’s unyielding ridge carving deeper into the tenderest parts of him, of the clamps pulling his nipples into constant, screaming fire, of his swollen and welted cock throbbing in futile rhythm with every heartbeat.
Hours of watching Emmy and Zander lose themselves in each other again and again, their pleasure a living thing he could taste on the air even as his own was denied.
He didn’t flinch from the math. The cruelty of the clock was part of the gift — time made tangible and merciless.
Every sweep of the second hand was a lash he couldn’t dodge, every tick a reminder he existed in this suspended agony for them, because of them, for the sheer exquisite privilege of being theirs.
The knowledge anchored him. Perhaps he’d be on the pony the entire time. Perhaps not. But whatever happened, he was theirs, and at the end of the eight hours, no matter how wrecked and exhausted he was, he’d accept whatever mercy or further torment they chose to give him next.
Because that was the truth of it: the clock wasn’t his enemy. It was a gift. Yet another tool of their torture, their love, their dominion.